Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am proceeding. Let us be clear, the troika may be leaving but the troika mindset remains. Fine Gael and the Labour Party have blamed the troika for all sorts of decisions the Government has taken in direct breach of its electoral mandate. It has brought in many austerity measures that were not recommended by the troika. It has taxed and cut the most vulnerable in society. Next year, regardless of whether the troika is here, the Government will take another €2 billion from the economy in water charges, taxes and cuts to health, education and other vital services. What will this mean to citizens who are suffering under its policy?

It is also subject to the fiscal treaty which the Government and Fianna Fáil pushed people to support. For many years to come we will be forced to keep deficits low to reduce the unsustainable debt burden inflicted on us as a people by the Government’s austerity policies. It has done nothing to relieve the citizens of the odious banking debt.

An féidir leis an Taoiseach éisteacht liom, lena thoil? The Taoiseach shouted 17 months ago at a Euro summit that a game-changer had been achieved, that there had been a seismic shift, that the European Stability Mechanism would reduce banking debt and separate banking debt from sovereign debt, that this would be done retrospectively and that the citizens would get back the money they gave.

Why has this not happened? The Government has not even put it on the agenda at subsequent meetings.

Sinn Féin is glad that we are not taking a second bailout but there is an awful lot of work to be done if we are genuinely going to regain economic sovereignty and it will not be done under this Government. This Government should go. This Government has led us from calamity to calamity. It will be only be done by a Government that understands that you have to be fair in terms of how you move forward. You have to try to treat people on the basis of equality and you have to make deficit adjustments that are fair and growth-friendly. An economy cannot be cut but must be stimulated and jobs must be created if recovery is to be sustainable. A Government needs to appreciate that the banking debt is a noose around the citizens of this State. This Government does not do this. It has been bounced once again into leaving this programme - another decision taken by others that the Government did not perceive. The way this Dáil was brought together this morning is proof positive of that. Let us be very clear. The Government will continue to saddle people with desperately obnoxious austerity policies for the rest of its term. It continues to decimate, emasculate and destroy public services, guarantees and workers' conditions and to push more and more people off the island and across the world. Those of us who remain here - working families - are pushed into poverty. Labour or Fine Gael have nothing to applaud themselves for this morning.

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